Mission: unpopular; as many of America’s best known courses turned from parkland layouts into virtual forests, their basic character changed. Now, led by Oakmont, they’re returning to their roots – tree removal programs at the Oakmont Country Club and other golf courses
Nowhere is this reversal or “restoration” more apparent than at Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh. The home of seven U.S. Opens has gone through a decade-long program of tree removal that is ongoing. It started one day when head pro Bob Ford ushered a group of members out to a “double hazard” on the first hole–a bunker with tree trouble between it and the fairway. “See this?” Ford said. “Something’s gotta go here.”
But when Oakmont’s tree-removal process began in earnest in the mid-1990s, it took place surreptitiously, as it often does to avoid detection by tree-loving members. Former Oakmont superintendent Mark Kuhns assembled a SWAT team of 12 workers assigned to different tasks, with headlights showing the way. Their days would start at 4 a.m., while members were still asleep. Huge tarps were spread out as the crew cut down trees, mainly pin oaks, then hauled the limbs into no man’s land. A stump grinder was on hand, and two high-powered vacuums sucked up leaves. The greens chairman and an 18-member club board were behind the plan, but the bulk of the members were kept in the dark.
“We took down so many trees before anybody knew what was going on,” says Kuhns. The crew was working on removing a grove of 13 large pin oaks dividing the 12th hole and the 13th green. “We got down to three of them still standing when somebody noticed what was going on,” recalls Kuhns. “Then they caught up to my chairman, and it became a very sour issue.”
At one full membership meeting, former greens chairman Banks Smith recalls that all those opposed to removing more trees sat aggressively in the front rows, while those on board with the program “ordered a drink and went to play cards.”
There were factions, a threatened petition, prayers for the trees’ survival from a neighboring church, even a whiff of a lawsuit. But after much quiet persuasion, politicking, four greens chairmen and, in the end, 3,500 felled trees, Oakmont has been fully and magnificently restored. Sure, a number of trees remain, but the emphasis is back on the bunkering and the dramatic contours of its fairways and greens. A round there this spring with three of those former greens chairmen revealed the zeal of their mission, with remaining trees still being discussed and targeted. “Those have to go,” the group agreed about a grove of three trees left of the 18th fairway.
“They used to say that you could see almost every hole at Oakmont from the second story of the clubhouse,” says Bill Fallon, general chairman for the 2003 U.S. Amateur at Oakmont. “Now we’ve almost got that back. You can now see the vistas from fairway to fairway or across several fairways. We’ve rediscovered the beauty and genius of Henry Fownes.”
Opposition, then acclaim
The thinned-out Oakmont stands as a beacon for others embarking on the hazardous path to de-treeing their courses. “If any club thinks they would be hurting themselves by cutting down a few trees, go look at Oakmont and see what they’ve done,” says Tom Meeks, the U.S. Golf Association’s senior director of rules and competitions. “They are the leaders in the clubhouse.” Representatives from numerous other clubs already have made the pilgrimage to Oakmont for inspiration.
Tree-removal programs have transformed many of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses (see accompanying chart), including Merion, Winged Foot, the Olympic Club, Medinah, National Golf Links of America, Oak Hill, Garden City and Baltusrol. In the publinx arena, Tenison Park, the hustlers’ paradise in Dallas, removed trees as part of a restoration program–but not without a fight.
A.W. Tillinghast discovered the perils of tree removal years ago. “I sometimes take my very life in my hands when I suggest that a certain tree happens to be spoiling a pretty good golf hole,” he wrote in 1937.
Author: Peter McCleery